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Today it reached 39 Celsius, today we removed the lower half of our kitchen that contained asbestos.
In case you don’t know, to safely remove asbestos the room needs to be sealed off lined with plastic and full safety suits need to be worn.
So after about two hours I was pretty sure I was going to die and after about four I had some intense claustrophobia thankfully we then finished.
Even though we were very careful the entire process filled me with dread and I’m so glad it’s the only room in the house with this problem.
Fortunately there are no photos of me in our claustrophobic jumpsuits to share. I can show you the room as it is and the (shouldn’t have been surprising) surprise that we found when we removed the cabinets.

And our lovely surprise.

On the up side I now no longer wonder where the draft was coming from when I stood at the kitchen cabinets.

Tomorrow the rest of the plaster in the room comes out, the sink (hopefully) goes in and we finish putting new flooring in for under the cabinets.

Today it reached 39 Celsius, today we removed the lower half of our kitchen that contained asbestos.In case you don’t know, to safely remove asbestos the room needs to be sealed off lined with plastic and full safety suits need to be worn.
So after about two hours I was pretty sure I was going to die and after about four I had some intense claustrophobia thankfully we then finished.
Even though we were very careful the entire process filled me with dread and I’m so glad it’s the only room in the house with this problem.
Fortunately there are no photos of me in our claustrophobic jumpsuits to share. I can show you the room as it is and the (shouldn’t have been surprising) surprise that we found when we removed the cabinets.

And our lovely surprise.

On the up side I now no longer wonder where the draft was coming from when I stood at the kitchen cabinets.

Tomorrow the rest of the plaster in the room comes out, the sink (hopefully) goes in and we finish putting new flooring in for under the cabinets.

Now that we know our kitchen has asbestos, the list for our kitchen renovation has grown.

Because we are removing the lower half of the walls to get rid of the asbestos we have decided to remove all of the walls as the top half of the walls are quite textured horsehair plaster and are going to look weird with fresh flat plasterboard below them.

This also means that the goal of having the kitchen complete before Christmas is looking unlikely.

People reading this might think,well of course you have to plan an addition to your budget and time for unexpected things that crop up. And I agree, in this case we didn’t plan for something like this because prior to purchasing the house we had a building inspection completed which provided us with a false sense of security in this case.

All in all it’s not the end of the world, but I am left wondering what else was not found during our building inspection. There’s no point in dwelling but instead just forge forward one foot after the other and prepare for this weekend and the removal of the asbestos*.

On the positive side it means that things like a slide out hideaway for coffee and tea can be considered straight away. I was planning on stealing some space where the kitchen meets a bathroom cupboard. The cupboard won’t be helpful in the bathroom once we renovate it so stealing the space to keep my kitchen benches clear is something I’ve wanted to do from the start. It will be a little like this but going into the wall instead of a cupboard.

Saturday not so much with the kitchen budget breaking confirmation that the lower half of our walls are indeed made of asbestos. This is made all the more disappointing by the fact that we paid for a building inspector and it was not on the report.

Sunday morning provided a big boost and a very welcome distraction to the kitchen disaster, my morning routine of flicking through beautiful blogs coffee in hand was even better than usual.

Reading one of my favourite design blogs, Emma’s Design Blogg, I saw my name, I was a bit surprised so I looked a few more times, it was definitely my name.

Another week has passed us by with little done to the house, even with no work done it’s been an an up and down week.
Friday was lovely, with our new towel rack in place.

Saturday not so much with the kitchen budget breaking confirmation that the lower half of our walls are indeed made of asbestos. This is made all the more disappointing by the fact that we paid for a building inspector and it was not on the report.

Sunday morning provided a big boost and a very welcome distraction to the kitchen disaster, my morning routine of flicking through beautiful blogs coffee in hand was even better than usual.

Reading one of my favourite design blogs, Emma’s Design Blogg, I saw my name, I was a bit surprised so I looked a few more times, it was definitely my name.

On the weekend I started on one of the long list of kitchen renovation tasks our pantry. We had two options planned for the pantry. Our first preference was to cut through the wall and build a walk in pantry … Continue reading →

On the weekend I started on one of the long list of kitchen renovation tasks our pantry. We had two options planned for the pantry. Our first preference was to cut through the wall and build a walk in pantry in the wasted space in our adjoining “exit” room, extry? It’s a smallish currently non functional room that joins the kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms and the back doors.
We had more than one option planned as there was no way of knowing exactly where the studs or braces were without removing plaster, stud finders don’t seem to work well here I’m not sure if that’s something to do with the horsehair plaster or the operator. Anyway, I cut from the exit room side because I would be able to hide the hole behind our fridge for now. I’m pretty happy that I started on that side given what I found. First find was the stud exactly in the middle of the wall leaving us with 45cm to use each side. Clearly this rules out the walk in pantry option a apart from people who are o the tiny side like myself it wouldn’t be very accessible.

This means we will now install pull out pantries either side of the stud, one side will have a full height pantry the other a half height with pull out shelves for the microwave, toaster and slow cooker to save bench space. I’m pretty excited about it.

But as the title suggests that’s all on hold because of the second find, fibro board.
You can see below that the upper half is horsehair plaster and below the dreaded board.

Because I have no idea when it was added to the house we can’t be sure it’s not hiding asbestos. So the next step is to get someone in to analyse it and potentially have to pay for expert removal. Which while a crimp in the budget is something I’m happy to pay for because I do not want to touch that stuff at all.

Now that we know our kitchen has asbestos, the list for our kitchen renovation has grown.
Because we are removing the lower half of the walls to get rid of the asbestos we have decided to remove all of the walls as the top half of the walls are quite textured horsehair plaster and are going to look weird with fresh flat plasterboard below them.

This also means that the goal of having the kitchen complete before Christmas is looking unlikely.

People reading this might think, well of course you have to plan an addition to your budget and time for unexpected things that crop up. And I agree, in this case we didn’t plan for something like this because prior to purchasing the house we had a building inspection completed which provided us with a false sense of security in this case.

All in all it’s not the end of the world, but I am left wondering what else was not found during our building inspection. There’s no point in dwelling but instead just forge forward one foot after the other and prepare for this weekend and the removal of the asbestos*.

On the positive side it means that things like a slide out hideaway for coffee and tea can be considered straight away. I was planning on stealing some space where the kitchen meets a bathroom cupboard. The cupboard won’t be helpful in the bathroom once we renovate it so stealing the space to keep my kitchen benches clear is something I’ve wanted to do from the start. It will be a little like this but going into the wall instead of a cupboard.